Abstract
When errors in software modelling activities propagate to later phases of software development lifecycle, they become costlier to fix and lower the quality of the final product. Early validation of software models can prevent rework and incorrect development non-compliant with client’s specification. In this paper we advocate the use of ontologies to validate and improve the quality of software models as they are being developed, at the same time bridging the traditional gap between developers and clients. We propose a general ontology-mediated process to validate software models that can be adapted in a broad range of software development projects. We illustrate this for Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) development providing early evidence of the soundness of our approach. We successfully validate and improve the quality of MAS models for a real-life development project, illustrating the ontology-mediated models validation in a commercial setting.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Ashmalla A, Beydoun G, Low G (2009) Agent oriented approach for call management. In: International conference on information systems development, Nanchang, China. Springer, Heidelberg
Benevides AB, Guizzardi G (2009) A model-based tool for conceptual modeling and domain ontology engineering in OntoUML. In: International conference on enterprise information systems, Milan, Italy. Springer, Heidelberg
Benevides AB, Guizzardi G, Braga BFB, Almeida JPA (2009) Assessing modal aspects of OntoUML conceptual models in alloy. In: International workshop on evolving theories of conceptual modeling, at the international conference on conceptual modeling, Gramado, Brazil. Springer, Heidelberg
Beydoun G, Hoffmann A, Fernández-Breis JT, MartÃnez-Béjar R, Valencia-GarcÃa R, Aurum A (2005) Cooperative modeling evaluated. Int J Coop Inf Syst 14(1):45–71
Beydoun G, Low G, Henderson-Sellers B, Mouratidis H, Gómez-Sanz JJ, Pavón J, Gonzalez-Pérez C (2009) FAML: a generic metamodel for MAS development. IEEE Trans Softw Eng 99(1):841–863
Brandão AAF, Silva VTD, Lucena CJPD (2007) Observed-MAS: an ontology-based method for analyzing multi-agent systems design models. In: Agent-oriented software engineering VII. Springer, Berlin, pp 122–139
Girardi R, Leite A (2008) A knowledge-based tool for multi-agent domain engineering. Knowl Based Syst 21(7):604–611
Guarino N (1998) Formal ontology and information systems. In: Formal ontology in information systems, Trento, Italy. IOS Press, Amsterdam
Hristozova M, Sterling L (2002) An eXtreme method for developing lightweight ontologies. In: Workshop on ontologies in agent systems, at the international join conference on autonomous agents and multi-agent systems, Bologna, Italy. ACM, New York
Juan T, Pearce A, Sterling L (2002) ROADMAP: extending the gaia methodology for complex open systems in international joint conference on autonomous agents and multi-agent systems, Bologna, Italy. ACM, New York
Lister K, Hristozova M, Sterling L (2005) Reconciling implicit and evolving ontologies for semantic interoperability. In: Tamma V, Cranefield S, Finin T, Willmott S (eds) Ontologies for agents: theory and experiences. Birkhäuser, Basel, pp 121–144
Nyulas C, O’Connor M, Tu S, Buckeridge D, Okhmatovskaia A, Munsen M (2008) An ontology-driven framework for deploying JADE agent systems. In: International conference on web intelligence and intelligent agent technology, Sydney, Australia. IEEE Computer Society, Washington
Okouya D, Penserini L, Saudrais S, Staikopoulos A, Dignum V, Clarke S (2008) Designing MAS organisation through an integrated MDA/Ontology approach. In: International workshop on transforming and weaving ontologies in model driven engineering, Tolouse, France. CEUR-WS.org
Shanks G, Tansley E, Weber R (2003) Using ontology to validate conceptual models. Commun ACM 46(10):85–89
Sterling L, Taveter K (2009) The art of agent-oriented modeling. In: Intelligent robotics and autonomous agents. MIT Press, Cambridge
Tran N, Low G (2005) Comparison of ten agent-oriented methodologies. In: Henderson-Sellers B, Giorgini P (eds) Agent-oriented methodologies. Idea Group, Hershey
Tran N, Beydoun G, Low G (2006) Design of a peer-to-peer information sharing MAS using MOBMAS (ontology-centric agent oriented methodology). In: International conference on information systems development, Budapest, Hungary. Springer, Heidelberg
Westland JC (2002) The cost of errors in software development: evidence from industry. J Syst Softw 62(1):1–9
Acknowledgments
This work is supported by the Australian Research Council. The authors wish to thank developer Bin Lu for providing software models to support the case study.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2011 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC
About this paper
Cite this paper
Lopez-Lorca, A.A., Beydoun, G., Sterling, L., Miller, T. (2011). Ontology-mediated Validation of Software Models. In: Pokorny, J., et al. Information Systems Development. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-9790-6_36
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-9790-6_36
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-4419-9645-9
Online ISBN: 978-1-4419-9790-6
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)